Wind, waves and tides deposit a wide variety of seaweed, debris and the like on beaches. In tourist areas, considerable effort is spent in cleaning beaches to make them tidy, attractive and pleasant. Because these cleaning efforts can be labor intensive and thereby costly, special purpose machines have been proposed to dig up part of the sand on the surface and pass it through a screening device to remove debris, as shown in U.S. Pat Nos. 2,627,712 and 4,050,518.
Efficiently picking up and disposing of seaweed is an altogether different proposition than screening sand to remove debris. The quantity of seaweed deposited on a beach is a function of how much seaweed is in the water and how fast the seaweed is being driven toward the beach. Fortunately, seaweed is deposited on beaches periodically, often in a seasonal pattern. The distribution of seaweed on the beach is more a function of the tides because any seaweed deposited will be between the high and low tide. In an area where tides are not large, as in the western Gulf of Mexico, seaweed will be deposited in a relatively narrow band. Similarly, in areas where tidal movements are larger but the slope of the beach is relatively steep, seaweed will be deposited in a narrow band. In locations where tidal movement is large, seaweed will be deposited in a wider band, the upper end of which is the high tide and the lower end of which is water level.
To date, the known technique for removing seaweed is to use a front end loader, scrape the seaweed and a few inches of sand off the surface, put the material in a dump truck and haul it to a convenient site, usually near the dune line. This type operation is relatively slow and thus relatively expensive. A typical operation comprises one front end loader, two or three dump trucks and the necessary operators and supervisors. Depending on the amount of seaweed involved, experienced crews of this size can typically clean two-tenths of a mile of beach per eight hour day. An inspection of the sand-seaweed piles shows that the major proportion of the hauled material is sand.
The fingers of this invention appear superficially similar to root rakes which are attached to bull dozer blades for the purpose of uprooting brush and small trees. These root rakes are typically attached to pivot connections at the top of the bull dozer blade and extend in front of the blade.
Other disclosures relevant to this invention are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 349,685; 891,709; 3,762,577 and 4,768,331.